Arne Duncan Wants a Bummer Summer

Don’t you love summer, the beach, the sand, all the fun? Well how would you like it if there was no summer vacation? Cabinet secretary, Arne Duncan is in favor of this idea. Duncan has been working to pass a law to say no more summer vacation for school age children. Duncan’s goal is to get ahead of the leading countries in education. Countries like India and China have longer days and school years than us, the same schedule applies to some charter schools.

Duncan would like charter, public and private schools all to be the same, school day, and year. But what about the kids? Don’t kids need down time? Studies have shown that when kids have more down time it expands their mind to obtain more information. With longer days and no summer vacation, kids would barely ever have time to rest. Duncan also says it will lower the dropout rates. Wrong! If kids have to do more work then more will just drop out sooner within time.

It would just be more work for kids who would already not want to do work in the first place, let alone an extra two months of work. Another argument he has is it will improve education. Wrong! How could kids remember everything from a year ago when it came to finals? If we forget 10% of all information we receive each day how would the kids remember from last year? Maybe we should shorten the school year instead. Another thing is with this economy how would teacher and student supplies be funded? Another two or three months worth could have schools having to cut classes and extra curricular activities because of the added costs. Additional costs to keep schools open include energy and transportation.

Maybe our cabinet secretary should think this through a bit more and see that this could hurt many schools and students, educationally and economically.